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talk to me about catws!!! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

I’m gonna talk about how the character of the Winter Soldier relies heavily on sound throughout the film because it’s one of the first things I picked up on during my numerous re-viewings and I think it’s one of the strengths of the film in terms of film technique.

For starters, the Winter Soldier is a really interesting character because he’s one of the titular characters and he’s key to the plot, but he has hardly any lines of dialogue and he’s only in it for maybe a third of the film. But the reason the Winter Soldier has such a presence in the film is because of the strength of Sebastian Stan’s ability to act using just his face and body and also the techniques that the film uses to establish details about his character that aren’t revealed through plot or dialogue. WS has only six real scenes in the film, which are:

First encounter with Nick Fury on the streets of D.C.

Shooting Nick Fury at Steve’s apartment

Speaking with Alexander Pierce

The Causeway

The Bank Vault (”But I knew him”)

Final Battle

So how do you establish the presence of a character who has six scenes during the film? The answer is to use every film technique at your disposal, and this film especially relies on sound. The Winter Soldier has to be one of the creepiest themes I’ve ever seen for a character because it utilizes a lot of metallic noises, robotic clanging, and inhuman screaming, which matches perfectly the visceral diegetic sounds of WS during the film, like the sound of the metal arm. It’s a far cry from what a normal character theme would be, because The Winter Soldier theme is for a presence, not for a person, which works so well given his legendary status as an assassin (“most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists”).

The film uses sound in a major way to fill in the details about his character that can’t be shown on-screen, as well as to establish him as an inhuman figure that has the ability to morph what goes on around him, adding to his threatening presence. Firstly, when he’s first introduced to the audience and to Nick Fury on the streets of D.C., the music, which had been an exciting combat theme mirroring the action, suddenly goes very quiet and what you hear is what I can only describe as a hollow sound, a few notes of the WS theme. It’s a sound very evocative of a desolate wasteland. WS is unique because you never see him ‘enter’ a scene; he’s always there, and as soon as he appears, the sound in the film changes to mirror his presence. This happens when he appears and ambushes Fury’s car and the sound grows very quiet and haunting, and also during the scene where he appears in Alexander Pierce’s kitchen, but it also happens in a much larger way when he gets the shot at Steve’s apartment.

When Steve and Fury are talking, the song It’s Been a Long, Long Time is playing as diegetic music in the background to mask their conversation. It’s symbolic, because the lyrics mirror Steve and Bucky’s relationship, but it also serves a practical function within the storytelling. However, as soon as WS takes the shot and Fury goes down, the music very obviously warps in a really horrifying way that is more psychological. As Steve and Sharon and Fury are talking, their voices still sound normal, but the music playing, which logically should sound exactly the same, suddenly takes on a chilling, haunting quality. All because WS has appeared and distorted the scene. Essentially, the Winter Soldier is a character that is able to distort the reality of every scene in which he appears, because he’s a character that stands outside of reasoning and the fabric of reality itself. (Which makes a lot of sense given that he’s a character who was thought dead, but has in fact been alive for seventy years and has become the world’s deadliest assassin). Even when he doesn’t appear, such as when Steve and Natasha and Maria are watching Fury in the ER, as soon as Steve mentions “he’s fast; strong. Had a metal arm,” the WS music creeps back in because the Winter Soldier doesn’t need to be on the screen in order to ‘be’ there. 

The causeway sequence is probably my favourite in the entire film, because it expands on what we’ve already learnt about WS through sound. The theme appears instantly as soon as he lands on top of Sam’s car, and then goes into a very metallic, action heavy piece of music. What’s really interesting, however, is what happens when Natasha draws WS away from Steve and Sam into the streets. As WS is walking down the street (and another thing to note about WS; he’s threatening because he never runs, only walks), the sounds of screaming and sirens are deliberately pushed far down on the sound hierarchy because what’s actually happening is that the audience is being given a rare glimpse into his point-of-view, which is incredible given that he’s a “villain” and not one of the protagonists. It offers the audience a view of how the Winter Soldier’s mind works. He’s focused solely on the mission, which in that moment is to listen for Black Widow, meaning all other superfluous background noise is deliberately muted because it is irrelevant to him. Then, we hear what he hears: the sound of Natasha speaking, which of course turns out to be a recording and not actually her. Later, after Natasha gets shot, the camera does a pov shift to Natasha and the music pretty much cuts out, which helps to show the audience just how terrified of WS she is (the shaky, handheld pov camera shot), which is something incredibly rare for this character because the only other person we’ve ever seen Black Widow scared of is the Hulk. Then WS jumps back into the shot on top of the car, rifle pointed straight at Natasha in what I personally consider to be the single best shot of the whole film, and the WS theme surges back in in a really terrifying way, because both Natasha and the audience know in that instant that if Steve hadn’t appeared at that very moment, Black Widow would be dead.

All of this is great stuff, but the cincher for me in why this film is superior to every other superhero movie in terms of technique is that in addition to establishing the Winter Soldier’s inhumanity through sound, sound also plays a huge role in establishing his humanity, which happens almost at the very instant Steve mentions the name “Bucky.” At the bank vault, when WS is asking who the man on the bridge was, the sound of the robotic, metallic WS theme is deliberately pushed back in favour of an emotional note that is clearly evocative of Steve. 

All of this culminates in the scene of the final battle, which takes the established haunting Winter Soldier theme and plays that out while Steve and WS are fighting, until the instant Steve tells him “you know me.” As soon as Steve engages him in conversation, the Winter Soldier theme disappears and instead you get a piece of deeply moving music playing as Steve tells him that he’s not going to fight him, that he’s his friend, and that “I’m with you till the end of the line.” Then it goes into that emotional piano piece as Steve falls into the Potomac and Bucky dives in after him. Essentially, what’s happening here is that for two hours this character has been crafted as a robotic, inhuman assassin who distorts the fabric of reality and morphs every scene he’s in simply through his presence, but suddenly he’s now being treated like a character; an actual person. All because Steve Rogers is treating him like a person. Steve Rogers is the one thing that keeps the Winter Soldier human, and the film manages to tell us that simply through sound.

And this is why CA:TWS stands above every other superhero movie in terms of technique, in my opinion.

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I think fandom should avoid zeroing on Bucky when talking about how wrong eg is. Steve is his own person and what happened in eg can be easily shown as completely wrong without a single mention of Bucky. The way his life evolved was completely ruined not because what eg made him do ignores Buckys wellbeing, its because it ignores his mental health and wellbeing.

Bucky is his soulmate there is no debate but Steve himself is a complete person with really good moral values.

…..I think it’s completely acceptable to do both. steve rogers’ ending was a completely assassination of his character bc it went against his moral code, and was an anti thesis to the very core of his person…..but you also can’t completely leave the major people his decision effected (bucky & sam) out of the discussion

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One of the things that made Captain America: The Winter Soldier so good was that it really went out of its way to establish character’s competence before they fought the big climax of the story, so you really feel the stakes. 

Fury escaped a whole set of police cars and weaponized teams and being shot at from all sides, but then comes the Winter Soldier and bam just like that he’s down. Steve took out a set of pirates and Batroc at the start of the movie, then an entire elevator full of STRIKE agents, brought down a plane with his bare hands, but then bam the Winter Soldier slams into him like nothing else before. 

And with Winter Soldier we see him take out Fury twice, go toe to toe with Steve, hurl Natasha around, yank a guy from a car, jump from a bridge, he’s restrained in a room filled with people with huge guns and he slams a guy halfway across the room, and then Pierce goes ahead and slaps him, because he can.

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list of favorite things as a fanfic author:

When someone is really freaking mad at me for inducing an emotional response from them

when readers give me a background of how/when they read my writing

when readers give me a background of why they shouldn’t have been reading my writing (usually while at work)

when readers quote my work back to me in comments

the frickin’ real heroes here, the ones who comment on every chapter of an ongoing multi-chapter fic

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Fanfic writers be like: goddamnit, this idea is so fucking sad it’s making me cry just thinking about it. Let me write it down so I can inflict it on others.

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#What Is Your Greatest Weakness?

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insp.

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The man on the bridge… who was he?

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„Look at me, son.“

Walter and Jesse from Breaking Bad.

This scene, emotionally-wise, always struck a chord with me, so it felt natural to come back to it and draw it. The relationship between Walter and Jesse was toxic to begin with and would only get more so, but in this scene, their bond really shines through. Somewhere along the way, Walter did care about Jesse.

(Also, great acting from Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston here.)

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When there's a discussion on whether Steve's ending was good or not, there's one thing that actually bothers me, and it's when people say that it was always meant to happen because it was already planned and the entirety of Steve's arc throughout the movies was purposely made to have that ending regardless. Like, that's just not true.

The creators confirmed a few times that the script for Endgame had a lot of changes and that they had different versions for the movie. I'm pretty sure that the Russos said at one point that in one of these versions Steve died during the battle and was decapitated. Steve dying was an option, and probably one that was going to follow through because it would just be easier and it wouldn't leave the public confused after previously stablishing a good and understandable enough explanation for time travel. It would also save Marvel from now having to explain what happened after Steve came back, the comment in FATWS about people believing that he's on the moon, and having to keep everything vague enough for the possibility of Evans agreeing to come back.

But the evidence of this ending definitely not being planned years before it's the movie itself. If Steve was really meant to end up with Peggy, they wouldn't need to bring her up so many times during the movie, it shouldn't be necessary to explain again and again how much she means to him, that's something that the audience should already know. When there's Civil War discourse people argue about who's right, the political perspective of Tony and Steve, whether Steve should've told Tony about his parents, or if he shouldn't have dragged the other avengers to battle, whatever, but I've never seen people question why he's so intent on defending his views and protecting Bucky from the government, because in CAFTA and CATWS the audience got to see and understand that Steve acts based on what he thinks is right and that Bucky is important to him. It's stablished, and so in Civil War people don't need flashbacks of the 40's or constant reminders to understand Steve's actions.

If Steve talked about his friends that were gone with the snap in the group therapy session, if the compass was replaced for a wrinkled photo of him with Sam and Nat or if he paid attention to SHIELD'S basement when he went to get the capsules and saw traces of Zola's work, and even then, ended up going back to the past, many more people than it did when the movie came out would get really upset about his ending. I mean, one of the main reasons why some people didn't believe the spoilers when they were leaked on Reddit was Steve's ending making no sense. Of course they had to try to make it seem like not getting to be with Peggy was Steve's biggest regret, because what the audience knew about them together was that that she was kind of the first woman that paid attention to him, she kissed him once, then told him that he had to live his life because she already had, and then enter his new love interest. If his ending was meant to be like that and was really planned in advance, we wouldn't need constant reminders of her character and their relationship, and in the previous movies it would've been clear that Steve hadn't moved on and that him being in the 21st century was still his biggest problem.

At the end of the day is media, you can like it or not, but there's no need to try to justify the way that a multimillionaire company fucks up characters' storylines and characterisation.

THIS 👆👆👆 FUCKING THIS 👆👆

you know what i think it's the sickest part? if they wanted us to belive that peggy was the most important thing in Steve's life, enough for him to comeback to the fucking segregation era, that they were always "mean to be" why would they made him kiss her niece???

it's clear that marvel just wanted the most heteronormative ending possible for the character, even if that means ruining his entire arch, beliefs, and ignore the best mcu trilogy aka the Capitan America one.

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CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER || Dir. Joe Johnston

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inspired by Euripides, from “Orestes”

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I get upset when I think about how one of bucky's defining traits that has haunted him thru all the films is his insecurity. like when he realized his 5'4" asthmatic best friend he'd spent most his life protecting no longer needed protecting. like how he hid away from his best friend for years in europe bc he considered himself damaged goods, and wasn't sure if he'd have a place in steve's shiny new life. like when he told steve "I don't know if i'm worth all this". like when bucky tried to underestimate his value and steve replied, "save it, buck. i've told you time and time again, i'm with you til the end of the line". like when despite maybe finally believing in his worth and the security of his relationship with steve, steve had left him for his happy ending. a happy ending that didn't include him.

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okay but the way bucky barnes was helpless on the ground after his arm got blown off, he was barely able to move - but when steve was in danger bucky grabbed tony’s leg. the last move he could possibly be capable of was this weak, desperate grab at tony’s armed suit, just to delay tony, do anything to give steve a chance. bucky had no defense, no plan, no way of stopping a counter attack that was sure to (and did) happen. but he did it anyway, because everything else be damned, he has to protect his friend who has gone through all of this to protect him, even and most especially when he feels like he wasn’t worth protecting.

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catws + onion headlines

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I just wanna talk for a minute about this shot. This right here is a triumph of writing, directing, editing, acting, and everything in between. All of it comes together, but the performance is the glue of it. Sebastian Stan sells this look so well, and it tells you everything without a single word uttered. Lesser filmmakers would have stopped the scene dead here to give us a series of flashbacks to spell out what’s going on in the mind of James Buchanan Barnes as his memories come back in a flood of pain and grief and loss. Instead, they just let the performance speak for itself, because the actor fucking crushes it here. I am a huge, HUGE fan of scenes where the filmmakers don’t spell it out in some flashback montage or exposition, and just rely on the film storytelling adage, “show, don’t tell” by letting an actor act. It’s such a perfect moment, the climax of the Steve and Bucky arc for this film, in a movie full of great choices, resulting in a direct assault on the feels. Fuck, I love this scene. fuck-me-barnes

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everyone moves on with their lives while i am still very permanently stuck on cap 2